


Nineteen Years Later

by savage_daughter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-War, Community: sshg_promptfest, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24281113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savage_daughter/pseuds/savage_daughter
Summary: When Crispin and Attina Snape arrive home from school with a new assignment, Severus and Hermione are overwhelmed with a past they have done their best to put behind them. Originally written for sshg-prompfest in July 2015.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Nineteen Years Later

**Author's Note:**

> Is it really old-school to state: Anything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling and I've just been playing with her characters for 12 years across multiple platforms under different pen names? Because if it isn't... it's all true. 
> 
> This prompt was given to me in 2015 for the SS_HG Prompfest! It was the first (and so far, last fest) I've ever participated in.

“What was the war like?” Crispin Snape asked his parents. 

He and his sister, Attina, sat attentively with their quills pressed against parchment waiting for their parents’ responses- a perfect imitation of their mother at their age. 

If it had not been for the serious line of questioning he and his wife were about to undergo, Severus would have barked in laughter at the caricatures his children had turned into in the short time it had taken for them to announce their assignment, and demand that both Hermione and Severus drop whatever it was they had been doing. 

Attina had promptly presented them with a letter from their teacher, unloading her school bag on the dining room table. 

The assignment had come in a crisp white envelope addressed to Master and Madame Snape. 

His wife had baulked at the address and very nearly cursed. 

When Severus and Hermione married, she had been determined to keep her maiden name and he had been of the mind to agree with her. After all, Severus hardly expected that she would agree to marry him after he had fumbled through his prepared proposal and even now, he was often times beside himself with the gift of her hand- her love was more than he had ever hoped to deserve. 

While Severus had insisted, she stay Hermione Granger, the entirety of their world had not taken her decision lightly and they insisted on purposeful ignorance, disregarding her wishes by referring to her constantly as Hermione Snape. The Wizarding world had matured greatly in the years since Voldermort’s downfall, but her decision was deemed too progressive still.

The letter opened with a delicate curling script that was far too advanced to belong to either of their children and read:

Master and Madame Snape,

With the 19th anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts approaching, I have sent each of your children home with a new assignment: Did your parents participate in the events of the Second Great Wizarding War? If so, what were their roles? If not, why did they feel it was unnecessary to participate? What was life like during Voldemort’s return? 

Please answer any questions your children have as openly as you can. While I have no doubt this subject may be painful for those of us who lived through the War, I do believe we can teach our children to avoid repeating the past through education and open discussion.

If you have any questions or reservations regarding this assignment, please do not hesitate to owl me personally. 

Otherwise, papers are due at the end of the class Friday. I look forward to reading each and every one!

Hannah Abbott,   
Head Teacher  
Memorial Primary School for Gifted Witches and Wizards 

Immediately, Severus had turned to his wife. “I believed I had escaped the idiocy of your classmates upon your graduation. Apparently, I was mistaken.”

Hermione did not respond, knowing the intense scrutiny of their would-be interrogators and chose instead, to shoot him a look of suffering and apology.

Now, they sat facing their children, unable to form a response to what seemed a simple enough question. 

Severus opened his mouth and it worked wordlessly for a moment before it shut with an audible snap. Fatherhood had made him soft and his inability to respond scathingly or otherwise, irritated him beyond comprehension. 

Hermione placed a hand on his, small and warm in comparison to his own, reminding him that he was not alone in his effort to form a worthy answer. 

In their years of marriage, Hermione had learned what calmed her husband best: gestures of kindness that spoke of uncomplicated intimacy. 

As a child, he had been denied comfort and as a young man, he had purposely starved himself of it, believing himself unworthy due to the sins he had committed. After years of marriage, he still felt as though he could not possibly deserve her affection and yet, she gave it freely.

“What was the war like?” Hermione echoed their son, sounding just as mystified. 

“Yes, mother,” Attina Snape replied huffily.

At this daughter’s words, Severus could feel his eyebrows nearly disappear into his hairline. 

Hardly a slip of a girl, and she possessed the attitude of someone twice her age- a trait she had inherited from her mother, though he was wise enough not to make that comment to his wife. 

His wife’s grip tightened momentarily and this time, he did snort in amusement, 

“The war... is not so easy to explain, Beastie,’ Severus placated his daughter.

Attina smiled affectionately at her father, exposing a missing canine that had been lost recently, placed beneath her pillow, and traded for a Galleon. 

Since the time she had learned to walk, Severus had called her Beastie. 

She was clever, difficult, and disarmingly mischievous when she felt so inclined. The diminutive was in sharp juxtaposition to her sweet smile, and she adored her father too much not to preen as his special endearment.

“We always knew the day would come when would have to explain the war and our part in it, but neither of us expected how difficult it would be to illustrate. Your father and I have both done things we regret because of the war. Your father fought in both of Tom Riddle’s wars and I was hardly older than Crispin when I was drafted into the Second Wizarding War.” Hermione said gently. 

“As much as it pains both your mother and I to admit, we were woefully unprepared for this conversation.”

Severus scrubbed his free hand along his face, uncomfortable with his inability to think clearly. 

Crispin and Attina looked at one another, expressions partly concealed from the view of their parents, before pressing their heads together in secret conversation. Even so, Hermione and Severus could see the cogs twirling in their brains. 

Never before had their parents been so at a loss for words and they found it just as startling as the adults they discussed quietly. 

Closing his eyes momentarily, Severus could clearly see Hogwarts Castle decimated and smoking, as if he stood before it on the day of the Final Battle. Even now, he could taste the bile that had risen in his gullet at the sight of colleagues and students alike, lying broken and dead as far as his eyes could see.

Know that his mind had wandered and where it had taken him, Hermione reclaimed the loosening grip on his hand and leaned into his shoulder. Her lips pressed to his ear and she pleaded softly, “Come back to me.”

It was her voice, the sound that he had come to love above all others, that had brought him back.

They sat at their dining room table, on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the life they had built for themselves, and the Battle of Hogwarts was nothing but a memory. 

Hermione’s voice always drew him to whatever moment they were currently living; pulling him from the deepest recesses of his mind. She smiled at him when he finally met her worried eyes, and while their children still sat in discussion, Hermione pressed a kiss to his stubble littered jaw. 

They both ignored the trembling of his hands, knowing it would fade as it always did.

"Mum?” Crispin asked. 

Hermione’s smile turned to their son. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“Why did you get involved in the war? If you were so young, how could anyone have thought it okay to let you fight?”

Hermione paused for a moment, thinking on how to formulate a response to a question she had asked herself repeatedly for years. 

“I was young, yes. I was eleven when I started at Hogwarts and incidentally, that was the year I became involved in the war without really knowing I had done so.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Attina replied, shaking her dark curls in protest. 

“You see, that was the year I met Uncle Harry. Voldemort or Tom Riddle, was just a story to me at the time; a fantastical character I had read about in Hogwarts: A History. I couldn’t have known that befriending Harry would drag me into a war I was too young to fight, but even if I had known, I don’t think it would have made a difference. Harry was the first friend I’d ever made, and I probably would have rushed in headfirst if I’d had knowledge of Tom’s return and his plots to destroy your uncle.”

“Your mother did not have much of a choice, I’m afraid,” Severus stated. "Albus Dumbledore knew that Harry Potter would need Hermione Granger just as much as she had need of him in those early days.”

Both children scribbled away on their parchments, taking notes for their assignment, neither of them looked up as Attina fired the next question:

‘Papa, why are people so afraid of you? Is it because of the war?”

Hermione pressed her free hand to her lips to stifle a giggle- shocked at the question itself, and less at the fact that her children had the audacity to ask such a thing. They were, after all, the children of the most feared Potions Master known in Hogwarts’ history. 

Bringing a finger to his lips, much as he had done when lecturing to his classes, Severus traced the thin lines before tapping them in thought.

When Hermione had announced her first pregnancy, Severus had panicked immediately; what if he was just as pitiless and abusive as his own father had been? What if his children were mocked due to their name? What if when they learned the truth if their father, they no longer loved him?

He could think of little else that would pain him so severely. 

“I want you both to understand something: The man that I was and the man that I am now, are not the same. You know of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters?” 

His children nodded quickly. 

When he knew he had their undivided attention, quills forgotten momentarily, Severus untangled his hand from his wife’s grip, before unbuttoning his shirtsleeve. Rolling it backwards and pushing it up his forearm, he exposed the pale length of his left arm: unblemished besides the wiry hairs that grew there. 

Producing his wand, he pressed the tip to his skin and whispered, “Finite Incantatem”

As soon as the spell left his lips, a bruise appeared on his forearm; a misshaped wound, ugly and deep purple, giving the impression of a fresh welt. 

“Oh, no,” Attina gasped. 

“I am sorry, Beastie,” Severus apologized to their youngest child. “I made many poor choices, my decision to join Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters chiefly among them. There are things that I cannot forgive myself for and my reputation still precedes me, I see. I was a nasty task master when I taught at Hogwarts, in part because of my associate with the Death Eaters.”

For the first time in the lives of his children, they were afraid of their father. 

Severus could see the distrust in the constriction of their pupils, and he could hear the shallow breathing that had begun to issue from across the table. 

But it was the smell of fear that radiated off of his children that disturbed him most. 

Terror had a particular scent and the familiarity of it assaulted Severus where he sat. It was panicked, unhealthy sweat, with a twang of something that was beyond explanation.

There had been a time when Severus was unable to walk into a classroom in Hogwarts without the stench radiating from his students, as if they had bathed in their anxieties before lecture.

His victims had reeked if it- along with piss and vomit.

None of the remorse he felt at remembering those he terrorized matched the remorse he experienced knowing that his children were sincerely frightened of their father, 

Replacing the glamour to what was left of his Dark Mark, Severus righted his shirt and waited for his children to speak. 

When it seemed they were too stunned to form a single sentence between them, he carried on the conversation.

“When I realized my mistake, I appealed to Albus Dumbledore, pledging my loyalty to the Order of the Phoenix and to the side of the Light. Much of what I did was done in the hopes to betray Tom Riddle and bring about his downfall, but I chose freely to bind myself to him long before I made the decision to bind myself to the Light.”

Both children still sat in shocked silence, staring at their father as if they had never seen him before. 

On more than one occasion, they had been teased by classmates because of their surname, but neither of them had never dared to think their father had been anything more than notorious due to his teaching style. There had been times when their parents had insisted they go by Granger, as opposed to Snape, and their reluctance to explain why finally made sense. 

“Your father is a very brave man,” Hermione defended. “Without his contributions, we would have not defeated Tom Riddle”

Crispin scratched the now dried end of his quill against his head. “Is that why Al is named after you?”

Their father grimaced painfully at the thought of Potter’s youngest boy and the absolute torture he would go through in life, sporting the ridiculous name Albus Severus. 

"Much to his chagrin, I’m sure.” 

‘It is a mouthful,” Hermione agreed. 

Attina agreed with a nod of her head, turning back to her parchment to jot down a few words. 

For the moment, his children had moved from fear of their father to amusement, and the vice that had gripped Severus’s heart, loosened.

“It’s getting late. I think we have time for one more question before it’s time to begin on dinner. What will be?” His wife asked.

Both children groaned at the announcement, unhappy to end the discussion where it was, before it had truly begun. 

But there would be more time tomorrow and the next night, and the rest of their lives to learn the truth of their parents and the sacrifices they had made to provide a world for their children to grow and thrive in. 

“You never answered the first question!’ Crispin protested. 

“Right you are.” 

Raising an eyebrow at his son, Severus attempted to define what living through the Second Great Wizarding War had truly felt like. 

“In a word, it was horrifying. Many times, your mother and I came very close to being killed. We lost friends, people we considered to be family, and watched as families were torn apart by the fighting. The war is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. It is very nearly impossible to describe, and someday, I may allow you to look in my Pensieve to view my memories, but for now, I hope my answer, as insufficient as it may be, is enough.”

“I have something for you both!” Hermione said quickly, before leaving the table. 

It only took her only a few moments to return to the dining room, the latest edition of Hogwarts: A History tucked beneath her arm and a smile on her face. 

Standing behind her children, she placed the tome between them and opened it before them. 

“This was my favorite book when I was a student and each year, more history is added to it.” Severus watched as his wife fingered the letters lovingly, before turning to one many dog-eared pages. 

“You see.” His wife pointed to a picture he could not distinguish from where he sat, but immediately knew which picture she had brought to their attention. “This was taken a few months after the Final Battle, when Hogwarts finally reopened.”

The picture was one of his favorites and he could clearly see in his mind’s eye, Hermione standing at his side, blue dress robes and unruly hair whirling around her in that summer’s breeze. Severus had his arm around her and while she looked at him adoringly, Severus had remained stone-faced and stern, until she had raised herself on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. 

It had been their first public appearance as Hermione Granger and Severus Snape and would later be the photo published in the Prophet, accompanied by the announcement of their engagement. 

“There’s an entire chapter on your father!” Hermione said excitedly. “He was much more active in the war than I ever was, but there’s a few sections about me as well. We may not be able to answer all of your questions, but this may help.” 

Attina flipped through the many-paged book, glancing at chapter titles and the brightly colored photos as they shot past, while her brother asked her to slow down to give him a chance to see as well. 

When the excitement died down, Crispin asked one last question: “Would you change any of it?”

Hermione took a deep breath as she sat down next to her husband once more; he gripped her knee where it wriggled beneath the table anxiously. She began chewing on the inside of her lip- a habit she had exhibited for as long as he had known her, before swallowing heavily. “No, I couldn’t. If one thing had happened differently, Tom Riddle might still be alive. It’s possible your father and I might have not fallen in love; I wouldn’t want to live a world that existed without you or your sister.”

Many nights, Hermione had wondered that very same thing: if she could go back and change one that that had happened, one life lost, would she, if it meant the world they lived in now didn’t exist? She had kept him up to all hours, panicking about her choices, frantic and irrational, weighing the different lives they could have lived against each other. 

The guilt of living and living well had troubled her. 

“War comes with the unspoken truth of casualties and tragedies. I would have gladly given my life to prevent Lord Voldemort from defeating your uncle, but I am grateful it did not come to that,” Severus added. 

Their son began to ask another question, when his stomach grumbled hungrily, causing both him and his sister to burst into laughter. 

‘Sorry,” he said sheepishly, color staining his pale cheeks. 

Hermione rose from the table, running her clammy hands discreetly along the rough material of her trousers. “It’s time for dinner and I think Crispin would agree! Wash up and we’ll eat shortly.”

When their children left the room, Hogwarts: A History opened between them as they walked, Severus met Hermione where she stood in their kitchen, body resting heavily against the marble of the counter. Wrapping his arms around her middle, he pulled her into the warm wall of his chest and buried his great nose into her frizzy hair, breathing in the familiar scent of their home. 

"We always knew this day would come, I just never imagined how hard it would be to discuss with our children... I know it’s better for them to learn this way, in our home where they are loved and cared for, but I wasn’t prepared.”

Pressing a kiss to her hair, Severus hummed the affirmative and willed away his own anxiety. 

Much later, after dinner had been prepared and eaten, after homework had been completed and reviewed, and their children had been tucked into bed, Hermione and Severus settled in their own room. 

Severus once more removed the glamour obscuring his Dark Mark and Hermione removed her own, revealing the word Mudblood etched deeply into her own forearm.

As it happened every night, Hermione fought the urge to hide the blemish in shame and Severus kissed the wound with reverence, reminding her that she had no need to hide from him. 

Severus warded the door, allowing no sound to exit without inhibiting their ability to hear if either Attina or Crispin came to them in the middle of night, woken by the monsters in their dreams. 

More often than either Severus or Hermione would admit, they too woke screaming and bathed in sweat, disturbed by night terrors. 

And there was little doubt in either of their minds, that they would sleep fitfully that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as: agirlcalledradar on the SS_HG Prompfest live journal community  
> Posted as: Cliche on Ashwinder  
> Never posted at: Granger Enchanted (RIP to both the website and my RL/HG WIP that perished with it) or Fanfiction.net (though that is subject to change)
> 
> SS/HG will forever be my bread and butter! I hope you enjoy this glance into this bittersweet and hopefully, realistic look at what I imagine their lives might look like 19 years into the future and how they might handle the tough conversations their children would undoubtedly ask at some point.


End file.
